Claim: US President Donald Trump called Imran Khan a convict who was involved in fraudulent cases. Trump further said that the Pakistani diaspora in the US urged him to advocate for the release of the jailed former Prime Minister of Pakistan.
Fact: Trump did not make any such statement about Imran Khan. The audio in question is likely a deepfake.
A Facebook user shared a post (archive) that allegedly features US President Donald Trump’s audio, in which he can be heard saying: “The Pakistani diaspora in America has approached me to advocate for Imran Khan’s release from prison. I have checked, and he is a convict and involved in many fraudulent cases. I will not interfere at all and would like justice to take its due course. Thank you.”
The video includes Urdu subtitles for Trump’s audio. It carries an image of Trump where he seems to be giving an interview, along with superimposed text: “Donald Trump also apologised, admitting that Imran Khan is a fraud and a certified thief.”
Former Prime Minister Imran Khan has been jailed on corruption charges since August 2023, some of which have been dropped or suspended.
Following Trump’s victory in the 2024 US presidential election, his ally, special missions envoy Richard Grenell, posted on X in November 2024 demanding Khan’s release. The message gained momentum when another Trump loyalist, Matt Gaetz, also called for Khan’s release, sparking hopes of the Trump administration advocating for the PTI founder’s release among his supporters.
Recently, Republican US Congressman Joe Wilson called on the Pakistani government to release Khan. In a post on X on 21 February, he wrote (archive), “Gen Asim Munir, de facto military ruler of Pakistan, go back to the barracks, end military rule, and Free Imran Khan!” Wilson also shared his letter (archive) to Trump from 11 February in which he called for Khan’s release and said that bilateral relations between the US and Pakistan were “in the national interest of both countries.”
However, it remains unclear whether Trump will take action to release Khan or what the future of bilateral relations between the US and Pakistan looks like, as the newly-elected president has not made any statements about Imran Khan’s imprisonment or bilateral relations between the two countries.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check suspected that the audio of US President Donald Trump remarking on Imran Khan’s conviction is likely a deepfake as Trump has made no such statement, which would have been widely reported in the Pakistani media.
A keyword search using variations of the terms “Pakistani diaspora,” “Imran Khan,” “fraudulent,” “Donald Trump,” and “conviction” did not yield any news reports that could substantiate the claim that Trump made such a statement. However, Pakistani American lobbying groups have met with US congressmen calling for Khan’s release.
This led us to suspect that the video was likely created using artificial generation software. Subtle signs also indicate that the audio is fake.
At timestamp 0:06, when the phrase “…Imran Khan’s release from prison” concludes, the following sentence begins abruptly without a natural pause, suggesting that the audio was spliced together, “which is a technique used to create inauthentic media from authentic audio clips,” according to an analytical report sent to Soch Fact Check by Marco Postiglione, a postdoctoral researcher at Northwestern University, and V.S. Subramanian, a professor of computer science at Northwestern University.
The experts further noted that, in the audio clip, at timestamp “0:15-0:16, the subject has a deeper vocal tone that does not align with their previous voice. Additionally, there’s a pause between phrases that appears mechanical, rather than following natural speech rhythms. These inconsistencies could further suggest that the media is inauthentic.”
Moreover, the report noted that the audio is likely fake as Trump’s voice lacks natural tonal inflections and he sounds monotone. “We believe this audio is likely fake and possibly generated via artificial intelligence,” the report concluded.
Soch Fact Check investigated the audio independently as well. We ran it through two deepfake detection tools.
One such tool is the Hiya Deepfake Voice Detector, which uses artificial intelligence to detect if the audio is a deepfake. Different parts of the audio played over the Chrome extension returned the same result: “The sampled voice is likely a deepfake,” with an authenticity score of one out of 100.
Another analysis of the audio through DeepFake-O-Meter, an initiative of the University at Buffalo’s Media Forensic Lab, also returned results which show that it is likely AI-generated: Five out of six detection models, AASIST, LFCC-LCNN, RawNet2, RawNet3, and Whisper stated that the probability of the audio being AI-generated is 94.1%, 100%, 100%, 99.89%, and 52.3% respectively.
“Donald Trump has been a repeated subject of AI-generated media. This audio could be part of a larger pattern of misinformation,” Northwestern University’s report stated.
Amid this surge of deepfake content around Trump, Soch Fact Check recently debunked a similar audio of the US President here. Interestingly, in this instance, we hear Trump advocating for Khan’s release and criticising the current Pakistani government instead of declaring that he will not interfere in Khan’s case.
Soch Fact Check, therefore, concludes that Donald Trump did not make any statement calling Imran Khan a convict who is involved in many fraudulent cases. The audio in question is likely fake.
Virality
The Facebook post was liked 1,900 times and shared 1,900 times. It also appeared on Facebook here.
It appeared on X here, here, here.
The audio was shared here on YouTube.
It was shared on Instagram here, here.
Conclusion: Donald Trump did not make any statement calling Imran Khan a convict who is involved in fraudulent activities. The audio is a deepfake.
Background image in cover photo: Al Jazeera
To appeal against our fact-check, please send an email to appeals@sochfactcheck.com